Two CNN hosts under fire for not fact-checking in presidential debate
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Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are being criticized for not allowing fact-checking to go through during the presidential debates between Biden and Trump.
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CNN's Dana Bash listens as she and Jake Tapper moderate the debate between President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP)
Two of CNN's top anchors who moderated the presidential debate on Thursday night are being criticized for failing to provide real-time fact-checks of comments made by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
During a debate, moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash asked follow-up questions when one of the candidates did not use up all their allocated time or had not directly addressed a topic, but throughout the 90-minute show, no fact-checking was provided for the claims made.
Former cable news host Keith Olbermann wrote on social media, "CNN’s decision to abrogate its journalistic responsibilities by not fact checking Trump’s firehose of lies is unforgivable."
The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said, "I wish the CNN moderators did more fact-checking, letting the audience know when things are said that are flatly false. Not sure how it helps for a platform to transmit falsehoods disguised as facts."
Read more: Trump fuels rumors of Biden being drugged before big CNN debate
Defending its anchors, CNN responded via a statement to The Hill, saying, “We are very proud of Jake and Dana. Our job was to make sure candidates were heard so voters can make informed decisions and we are pleased we were able to do that.”
While revealing the rules for the debate earlier, CNN said Tapper and Bash would be “empowered to use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion.”
'Nothing I said was wrong'
Meanwhile, after it was all over, Biden said at a post-debate fundraiser in Atlanta, “What’s going to happen over the next couple of days is they’re going to be out there fact checking all the things he said,” stressing, “I can’t think of one thing that he said was true.”
David Chalian, the political director of the network, told The New York Times earlier this week that Tapper and Bash would be concentrating on "facilitating the debate between these candidates, not being a participant in that debate," because the debate "is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking."
According to The Hill, CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale gave some real-time online fact-checks of statements made, but they weren't included in the 90-minute debate.
A source familiar with the Biden campaign told The Hill, “He [Trump] just lied through his teeth throughout the debate without any recourse from the moderators. Of course, the president had an opportunity to push him and did on many of the issues,” noting, “The moderators sat there and let him lie through his teeth the entire time.”
Although the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, acknowledged that Biden had a "slow start" in Thursday's CNN debate with Trump, she still nevertheless believed that Biden had a "strong finish".
"It was a slow start, that's obvious to everyone. I'm not going to debate that point," she told CNN, noting Biden's shaky performance.
Kate Bedingfield, a former Biden communications director, also expressed to CNN that "it was a really disappointing" evening for Biden, adding, "I don't think there is any other way to slice it."
According to a CNN survey, 67% of those who watched the debate said Trump had won.
Notable 'facts' unchecked
During the debate, Trump said that the United States has become uncivilized and is no longer respected in the world, blaming Biden for it.
Biden asserted that the economy was in disarray under Trump's administration, while Trump blamed Biden for the red-hot inflation rates. "He has not done a good job. He's done a poor job, and inflation is killing our country. It is absolutely killing us," Trump stressed.
In yet another one of his gaffes, Biden falsely claimed that no US troops had died abroad during his presidency.
"Truth is, I'm the only president… that doesn't have any, this decade, troops dying anywhere in the world," Biden said. However, this statement overlooked the deaths of 13 US military service members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 26, 2021, and three US troops killed by a drone attack in Jordan on January 28, 2024.
Trump also claimed that Hamas would have never carried out October 7's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood had he been in office. "Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas. You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money…They had no money for Hamas; they had no money for anything; no money for terror," Trump claimed.
